Preliminary labor force counts for San Francisco, Marin and San Mateo counties peg the current unemployment rates at 6.5%, 5.5% and 6.0% respectively, down 0.2 points from November to December in San Francisco and San Mateo, down 0.3 points in Marin.
As the size of San Francisco’s labor force increased by 2,300 to 478,700 in December, the number of unemployed fell by 1,000 to 30,900 and the number of employed city dwellers increased by 3,300 to 447,800.
Employment in San Francisco is currently up by 19,800 workers on a year-over-year (YOY) basis versus 16,700 the month before, but remains 17,700 workers below a December 2000 dot-com peak (at which point the unemployment rate in San Francisco measured 3 percent).
The unadjusted unemployment rate in California ticked up to 9.7% in December as employment increased by 21,400 but the labor force increased by 50,200 workers and the number of unemployed increased by 28,800.
∙ Monthly Labor Force Data for Counties: December 2012 (Preliminary) [EDD]
∙ Growth Rate Slows, But San Francisco Adds 700 Jobs In November [SocketSite]
∙ San Francisco Employment Trends And Dot-Com Context [SocketSite]

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Comments from “Plugged-In” Readers

I grew up thinking that 5% unemployment is the norm for a healthy economy.
We seem to be very close to that in the core bay area counties, with the trend towards increasing employment.
And if employment is normalizing, then that should help sustain real estate too….

That’s really excellent news.
Knowing what the ticket price is for newcomers in this City I can bet many of these new folks have very decent jobs.
Funny that we’re still comparing with the dot-com peak. It was a time when any one with a pulse and some HTML 101 could land a job and sublet a closet or an alcove downtown.
We are in a much better shape today. Some real money is being made, and the people moving in are highly competent.

So we added 20K employed people last year and pulled permits for around 2K units in 2011 (that could have come on-line in 2012). Of course some of that is umemployed getting jobs. But I guess additional work force for December alone was 2300 and 1000 was taken from the existing residents, so 1300 new workers. That doesn’t count people who took jobs out the city but moved to the city.
This information tells me we have not reached a top in housing/rent costs at all.

What’s the definition of “employed” here – can they live in SF and work in a different county (e.g.,San Mateo, Marin or Santa Clara)?
Given the mobility of the workforce here, would it make more sense to have a general SF Bay unemployment number vs. separate ones for Marin, SF, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Alameda and Contra Costa counties?